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No one does regal like Indian film royalty.
As she enters a room, Freida Pinto's red-carpet walk has a certain stateliness, an image supported by the entourage of 20 or so orbiting around her. With only one film to her name, the 24-year-old female lead of Slumdog Millionaire has mastered the art of breezing into cities on the awards circuit and captivating crowds. She recently touched down in Toronto to appear at a banquet for the South Asian lifestyle magazine Anokhi before jetting away to more accolades at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards in London.
It helps that the film is a runaway success, racking up multiple awards – including seven BAFTAs, five Critics' Choice Awards and four Golden Globes – as it heads into tomorrow night's Academy Awards with 10 nominations.
The award ceremonies as much as the film are turning Pinto into an international star. “I'm trying to be global,” she said during her Toronto stopover. “I think with Slumdog I realized one thing: When the film went to the various countries, like the U.K., India and the U.S., in India everyone wanted to call it their own. Everyone wanted to say it's an Indian film because it's based in Mumbai. And then in the U.K., everyone said it's a British film because of [director] Danny Boyle. And in the U.S., everyone wants to call it Hollywood because of [studio] Fox Searchlight.”
Pinto has been hailed as one of the most beautiful women in cinema, and her popularity helps draw attention away from the controversies surrounding the film. Since opening last month in India, the film, with its stylized depiction of violent Mumbai slums, has been sharply debated there. Some feel it creates a deliberately blinkered, negative impression of the country, one created by a Western director to boot. Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has espoused this view himself in the press.
Others contend that critics are blinded by the desire for a more flattering depiction of modern India. Still, throughout the debate, the movie has managed comparatively strong box-office numbers in India for a Hollywood film.
“India is a very large country, with a massive population. It's going to be really difficult to please every person out there, because everyone comes from a different background,” Pinto said diplomatically. “In my opinion,” she added, “it's the most honest portrayal of India that I have ever seen, where we have actually gone into the real locations. The VT [railway] station and the Dharavi slums, it is the real location. It is a portrayal of the truth. We don't want to force our opinions on anyone else.”
Pinto, who grew up in Mumbai, worked there as a model and hosted a TV travel show, said that shooting on location shows that the filmmakers cared about capturing the essence of the city. But slow and studious is not Boyle's style. His energy and storytelling maintain a running pace.
“A director like Danny Boyle pushes the limits any which way,” said Pinto. “In order to get your scenes in one of the most crowded stations in Mumbai, which is the VT – the Victoria Terminus station – you have to be willing to embrace the crowd, the sweat, the mugginess, the fact that 500 people are going to stare straight into your camera. And that you're going to have no other way to deal with it, but keep rolling with it.”
As for Pinto, with the world's press focused on her this awards season, it's clear she would rather not retreat to a Bollywood career: “I feel Bollywood and Indian cinema is definitely changing,” she said. “But Bollywood is also very escapist in a way. So it doesn't always strike those reality chords that Hollywood does. Or that British cinema does, or even that Iranian films do at times, you know? I guess I have always been drawn to realistic cinema. I enjoy watching Bollywood films, but I don't necessarily relate to each and every one of them.
“It would be fantastic in the future to be part of films that touch everyone's heart, not just people in India, not just people in England. You know?”